


but the fires are coming

by stitchingatthecircuitboard



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: CONTAINS CAP 2 SPOILERS, Character Study, I mean, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, don't read this anyways what is writing oh god oh god, don't read this if you haven't seen the movie, how do pronouns work we just don't know, kind of? it probably won't make sense unless you've seen the movie, this isn't really a ship fic except that it kind of is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 08:33:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1421626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchingatthecircuitboard/pseuds/stitchingatthecircuitboard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He does not remember, except that is better than being made to forget, again, and again, and again.</p><p>He does not go to Brooklyn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but the fires are coming

**Author's Note:**

> **warnings: brief description/references to electroshock treatment; brief, non-graphic reference to human experimentation; non-graphic murder**
> 
>  
> 
> (basically, if you were okay with everything in ca:tws, you're probably okay with this fic.)
> 
> thank you to sam, for looking over the first part.

The face in the museum is not his. Except it is, except that’s his nose, he thinks, for all that it’s been years since he’s caught more than a half-glanced reflection of himself in a window, dulled by slow creeping frost—

But his eyes don’t laugh the way the man-who-is-not-him does, and his mouth has never made that slow and easy smile. Even now, his expression feels fixed, frozen, like a house with all its shutters drawn tight and closed against the world.

He’d snarled at the Captain, he recalls abruptly, snarled and bared his teeth and widened his eyes against the alien burn of tears, and how strange it is to do that. To remember.

The man who is — was — is?— the mission laughs with the man-who-is-not-him, and he stares up at these faces numbly. He should feel something, shouldn’t he? No, he — does he? He shouldn’t. That’s not part of the mission. _Ten hours,_ Pierce had said; and _your work is a gift to mankind,_ and _wipe him._

He hunches his shoulders, curls his gloved hand in the contents of his pockets (a knife, a grenade, a phone; just because HYDRA has fallen doesn’t mean that he’s completely without means). No one in the Smithsonian pays any attention to him. At least there’s that.

The air outside is warm, humid, uncomfortable. The scarring on his shoulders itches, but it always does in this weather, and when the humidity increases it will ache incessantly, but that will not stop him, won’t even slow him down. Pain is relative, and he cannot be stopped.

The only question is: _what now?_

 

James Buchanan Barnes, sergeant in the 107th, best friend to Steve Rogers, Captain America, was born in Brooklyn. It’s not like he has anything else to do, anywhere else to go.

That is a lie. HYDRA will never fall. They are possibly looking for him. They are certainly looking for him. He thinks that they will not enjoy searching the Potomac, and that he should not have dragged the Captain from its depths, and that perhaps he should not have dragged himself out, either. He’s just given them leads, now, and he could go back, take shelter from the cold, but, but —

—but he can’t. He does not remember except he remembers rubber between his teeth and explosions in his head, and the Captain saying _i know you,_ and _’til the end of the line,_ smiling lopsidedly even through blood and bruise and bullets in his chest, and whispering _—bucky—?_

He does not remember, except that is better than being made to forget, again, and again, and again.

He does not go to Brooklyn.

 

It isn’t safe, he tells himself; it's the first place they’d look. It isn’t safe. It is hard to remember who they are, why he must not be found. His fingers ache for a — for — 

He curls them in his pockets, listens to the click of metal on his palm. He does not know. A knife, a gun, a garrote wire tight between? A pulse? Another hand in his, familiar pressure, _i had him on the ropes_ and _sure ya did,_ c’mon kid, get to your feet, didn’t you ever learn to run?

The Winter Soldier does not run. He knows this. The Winter Soldier does what he is told. The Winter Soldier finds his position, holds it, holds it until it does not exist. _Chaos and order,_ Pierce had said, and he thinks that maybe that was the truth of it; neither one alone, but both. He thinks that maybe that has always been the truth of it. He wonders what the Captain thinks. What James Buchanan Barnes thought. What he thinks. If he thinks. 

The Winter Soldier does not run. James Buchanan Barnes is an unknown, except in the few hard ways he isn’t: James Buchanan Barnes was a sniper, a soldier, a sufferer, a victim. A survivor? No — if James Buchanan Barnes were a survivor, he would be here now, and the Winter Soldier would never have existed, and neither would he.

Unless Barnes and the Soldier were the same — but then, what’s that say about him?

He learns from the mistakes of his forbears. He does not take a stand, because doing so means a fixed position, means being found (by whom?), means absolutes. He is a survivor, and absolutes mean death.

He runs.

 

There is a woman with hair like wildfire at midnight. She catches his eye in Atlanta, drinks coffee two tables over in Chicago, rolls her eyes when he curls into the weird quilted emptiness of rural America, looking for himself in skyscrapers and awful twisting roads and a wide, cloudless blue stretched over him like a shield. She does not speak to him. He’s not sure he wants her to.  


It’s months before he sees her again, smirking under hundred-dollar sunglasses.

“Been a while,” she says, casual. He shrugs. He has not been trying to hide from her. He could, but it would be difficult, and she has not tried to interfere with his aimless wandering. She fought for the Captain, which is not exactly a reassuring thought, but it is better than the alternative.

He sips at his water so that his voice won’t be as silence-roughed as it could be. “I thought you’d found more interesting things,” he says, and for a second her expression flickers to anger. 

“Other _people_ actually have plans,” she says dismissively. “Other people do more than look at the world’s largest bale of hay.”

“I haven’t,” he says, frowning.

“Speaking of which,” she says, “I was wondering if you’ve finished your voyage of self-discovery. Or — whatever it is you’re calling this. Because I’ve got a mission, and if you want, and you’re nice, I’ll let you come along.”

A mission — he frowns.

“The Captain is my mission.”

“That’s not incompatible with mine,” she says. He wishes he could see her eyes.

“Aren’t you worried about that?”

“I’m more worried that you’re out of practice,” she says, “since I think you have no idea what you want from him.”

He shifts, something uncomfortably warm creeping at the back of his neck. “What is your mission?”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “HYDRA.”

He hesitates.

“Hey,” she says, and if he had to ascribe an emotion to her voice, it would be gentleness, he thinks; like she’s afraid that he’s going to bolt at the slightest provocation. “Hey, c’mon. Aren’t you tired of running?”

He doesn’t know what he is. He tells her that. He doesn’t know why he tells her that. She purses her lips.

“That’s the whole problem, isn’t it,” she says softly. 

He glances at her hip. “—shot you. Is that—?”

She smiles thinly. “Yeah.”

“Then why ask me?”

She shrugs. “Figured you’d hate them more than anyone. Hate can be useful. And — it, look. It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t acting under your own power. You know that, right?”

It might be easier if he had been acting under his own power. He stays silent. She understands anyways.

“So,” she says. “In?”

It’s not like he’s got anything else to do. It’s not like he can run forever. It’s not like survival is his priority, really, because if he’d been as careful as he could have been, she should not have found him, and if she had, others could. HYDRA. The Captain. The Winter Soldier. James Buchanan Barnes.

“Yes,” he says after a few moments.

She smiles, showing her teeth. “Let’s go.”

 

“You can call me Natasha, by the way,” she says on the plane.

The name on her passport was Vanessa Anderson. The name on his was James Brandt.

“This,” she says, “would be where you tell me what you want me to call you.”

“I don’t have a name,” he reminds her.

“Well, you should pick one.” Natasha settles into her seat, rifles through the in-flight magazine disinterestedly. “I categorically refuse to refer to you by pointing or shouting ‘hey, you’ whenever I need your attention.”

He stares at his hands. Natasha bought him new gloves, because his old ones were wearing through across his fingertips and the arch from thumb to forefinger. The stitching is fine, elegant, comfortable to his live hand. He imagines it must be comfortable for the metal hand, too, and wonders where Natasha is keeping her tasers.

“Doesn’t have to be a real name,” she says. She’s scrutinizing him over the magazine when he looks up. “You can change it, too. But you need something.”

He shrugs. “James will do,” he says, thinking of Barnes’ easy smile and the light in his eyes when Steve Rogers spoke.

“Works for me,” Natasha says, and returns to the magazine.

 

He thrashes awake, like he does most nights, and tries to be still and quiet, they won’t like it if he’s unstable, erratic, feral, they’ll fasten the cuffs around his arms and put the rubber between his teeth, or he’ll put the rubber between his teeth and then they’ll cuff him, but it always ends in light and pain and he cannot hear for the sound of his own screams —

There’s a knock at his door.

He shifts, tries to disentangle his feet from the blankets, _get on your feet, kid, c’mon, not so bad, huh? how’s that shiner lookin’ today, punk?,_ and Natasha peers around the door, face unreadable as she surveys the room.

“Mind if I put the light on, James?” she says, and waits for him to catch his breath and force a nod before doing so. 

He can’t look her in the eye.

“God,” she says, “your hair is a mess. Do you actually like having it that long?”

He doesn’t know.

“Think about it,” she says kindly, and closes the door. She leaves the light on.

He drifts back to sleep a few hours later, and dreams of a small, thin boy with bony hands and kind, careful eyes. 

_i don’t need you to take care of me,_ he tells the boy. The boy combs out his hair with gentle hands.

 _okay,_ the boy says, his voice rich and deep for someone so small. _but — maybe you want me to._

He raises his hands, both live, warm, flesh-and-blood, and cups the boy’s face between them. _you’re my mission,_ he whispers. _stop—_

The boy closes his eyes, leans into the touch. _i love you too, buck,_ he says.

His hands, when he looks at them again, are asymmetrical, unmatched, except that they both know how to kill.

 

“Can you cut my hair,” he asks Natasha the next morning, only stumbling slightly over the words.

“Trust me,” she says, “you don’t want me cutting your hair, James.”

“I don’t think I trust anyone else,” he says.

For a second, her face freezes, and he hears the words she shoves back down, _still one person too many, haven’t you learned by now —_

“Okay,” Natasha says. “But wash it first, when’s the last time you showered?”

“Yesterday,” he says, frowning, and then — 

He’s been living free from HYDRA for months, now; it shouldn’t stagger him to realize that he can remember yesterday, that yesterday was a day without a mission (except the mission that cannot be executed), that yesterday he got to choose when to clean himself, to clean himself, to dress himself, to eat cereal instead of eggs instead of a thick, tasteless smoothie handed to him by someone in a white coat.

He looks up.

“I’m not James,” he says, not Barnes, not Bucky, _who the hell is bucky?_

“Pick a different name, then,” Natasha says, shrugging. “And, seriously, wash your hair this time.”

 

He sits docilely in the bathroom, shifts the angle of his head as she tells him to, and listens to the soft swish as the hair falls from her scissors, to her half-spoken curses, to the faint whir of a twenty-first century room with a refrigerator. He does not look in the mirror.

“It’s uneven,” Natasha says at last, “but it won’t get in your eyes during a fight anymore.”

“Thank you,” he says, the words strange and stilted even to his own ears.

“Go on, have a look.” Natasha nudges him. He flinches.

“Thank you,” he says again, and slips around her back to the bedroom. She lets him. He hasn’t seen his face in — how many years?

 _like anyone’d want to be afflicted with a mug ’s ugly as yours,_ the thin boy says, but he says it fondly, his hands gentle at the edges of his vision, _okay, stay just like that, buck?_

The boy steps back, perches precariously on the stool, and begins to draw.

 _won’t be long,_ he mutters, _won’t be long now._

 

Natasha finds them a HYDRA base, and gives him a mask and a gun and a third of the arsenal she’s been carrying in that sleek briefcase. She moves like a shadow, like less than a shadow, and he almost forgets that she’s there when she ducks out of his gaze. They take out the guards silently, with barely any struggle, and then they do the same to the other guards, and the techs, and then he finds a room with bodies strapped to tables and he cannot breathe and cannot see until Natasha’s hand is at his shoulder, and the bodies are gone, and the light through the grate in the ceiling has shifted just enough to tell him that dawn is not far. They torch the base before they leave, and in the light her hair looks more like fire than he’s ever seen.

“Sorry you had to find them on your own,” she says quietly, back in their safehouse, watching him pace in the corner.

He looks up.

“You had your own mission,” he says. “I understand.”

She looks away, but the corner of her mouth he can see curves up, sad and sweet.

“You helped me get them out,” she says. “I don’t know if you remember—”

“I don’t.”

Natasha shrugs, curls onto her side, closes her eyes. “Well, you did.” She blinks open at him. “Does it feel any different?”

He stops, frowns, paces back and forth again. “I don’t know.”

She’s quiet for a minute. “You’ll be okay,” she says suddenly. “You’ll figure it out.”

He stops again, sits carefully on the edge of his bed.

“Does the Captain know I’m with you?”

Natasha sits up, eyes meeting his squarely. “No,” she says firmly, “and he won’t unless you want him to.”

He believes her, and wonders if that makes him stupid.

“Oh,” he says, and feels calmer, and listens to Natasha fall asleep.

 

Natasha is packing a bag when he wakes up.

“I’ve got some personal business in the area,” she tells him. She clips the briefcase-that-isn’t shut, zips the small duffle and slings it over her shoulder. “House’s secure, should be for a while yet; I should be back by Thursday night.”

“I will look for you if you are not,” he says.

She smiles. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back, James.” The door clicks softly shut behind her.

 _how can i,_ the boy whispers, _you’re taking all the stupid with you._

 

It’s Sunday. He sits. The curtains are drawn. He cleans the gun Natasha left him and reassembles it and packs it neatly away. He watches a strange police procedural whose protagonists are dogs, and frowns at it until one of the dogs discovers a long-lost littermate, and they race around each other happily and, fuck, he’s crying and it’s obvious why, even to him, even if he doesn’t want it to be, and the Captain smiles at him like forgiveness, _i’m with you ’til the end of the line, pal,_ and didn’t he say those words once?

_who the hell is bucky—?_

 

It’s Monday, and there is no food in the house. There is money in an envelope on the television, euros creased just enough to not draw attention. He locks the door behind him, and goes to find sustenance. He leaves the gun behind, but the metal arm is a weapon in itself. There is a knife in his boot, a new phone that Natasha had gotten him in his pocket.

He stops in the grocer two blocks away, gathers bread and cheese and jerky and carrots and bottles of water to last him until Thursday. The woman at the counter rings him up, and as he waits for change he catches the eye of a young girl in a corner. She’s reading a comic book. The Captain’s shield shines bright on the cover. Her eyes are wide.

He presses a finger to his lips, takes his change, leaves. He hopes she will say nothing.

 

It’s Tuesday. He takes the gun apart, cleans it, puts it back together again. He cleans the knife. He checks the phone. He checks the internet. There is nothing to indicate anyone knows where the Winter Soldier is, even if there are still forums whispering about possibilities. It’s fine. He does not know where the Winter Soldier is, either.

Dusk falls, and the violet sky is beautiful, the air warm and dry. He pulls his hood over his head and goes out to see the city, a few scattered streets of it. 

Their safehouse is at the edge of the city, away from the action, so it’s quieter than Washington, D.C., had been, but the air is still full of sound, distant jazz, the low rumble of cars a few streets over, the clink of flatware and dishes in the restaurant he passes, a muffled cry from the alley forking away at the other end of the street —

He doesn’t realize he’s running until he’s there barely seconds later, and it’s him who ran, but it’s James Buchanan Barnes who shouts, “Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?!” and it’s the Winter Soldier who reels the bully back with a metal hand, who neutralizes the threat —

No; it’s him who stops. He breathes. The victim is trying to hold back sobs. He sets the attacker down, checks for a pulse, breathes more easily when he realizes it’s there, strong and steady. The victim looks up, fair hair and blue eyes and he has trouble swallowing for a second, because no way the universe would be that cruel, and — and, it’s not, it’s not the thin boy with charcoal smudged on his fingers, the one he sees and thinks he shouldn’t, it’s not the man who might be Steve Rogers, and it’s not the mission except, except it might be.

He extends his live hand carefully. “Are you alright?”

The kid nods. 

_i had him on the ropes,_ the thin boy says behind him, and he — or Barnes? — nearly says _i know you did, i know,_ but the kid in front of him, bruised and bloody around the mouth, is silent but for the heaving of his chest. 

“Go home,” he says, and doesn’t turn to watch him leave. 

He pulls the attacker deeper into the alley, the Soldier’s hand tight on the neck of his shirt, and waits for him to wake.

 

It’s Wednesday when he returns to the safehouse. The phone he had left blinks on the dresser.

“I told you not to do anything stupid, James,” Natasha tells his voicemail disapprovingly, and sighs. “Of all — a security camera? I mean — I get it. Really. I do. But you might have company of the star-spangled variety before I get back, so if you don’t want to deal with him, you should leave.”

He sits numbly on the bed. He looks at the gun. He looks at the television and its envelope of crumbled bills. He looks at the small, practical duffle that holds his toolkit and his clothes. He sits. He waits.

The light changes. Natasha does not call. She trusts him to take care of himself, he knows. She might be the only one who does. 

_you don’t have to do this alone,_ the thin boy says, calm and kind and clear.

Someone knocks at the door. “Housekeeping,” calls a distinctly American voice, a familiar one, even if it’s not the one in his dreams. Vaguely, he likes that they give him warning, that they don’t try to be sneaky about it. He wonders if they knocked at the front door before entering. Unlikely.

“Yes,” he says, dully.

The door slams open, and he doesn’t move to see the barrels aimed at his head. His hands are palm-up on his knees. The silver of his left palm glints in the late-afternoon light. The gloves Natasha had given him are in his back pocket; he’d taken them off in the night.

“Steve,” the first man says, the one who’d flown, “it’s him.”

The Captain ducks through the door, plainclothes like the man with wings, and, and he knows how this is supposed to go, _i thought you were dead—_

He clears his throat. “I thought you were smaller,” he whispers. The room gets very quiet. Distantly, a siren wails; children yell in the street. The quiet settles into his bones, and then the Captain moves, and it shatters. The Captain reaches for him, and he flinches, and the man who’d flown says sharply, _gun,_ eyes fixed on the rifle at the bed’s side.

He does not move. The man with wings steps forward, weapon unwavering, and slides the rifle out of reach. The Captain takes it, checks that it’s safe.

“The cartridge is in the bag,” he says quietly. “It’s unloaded.”

The man with wings pulls the duffle forward, confirms it. The Captain is completely still.

“Can I have a minute,” the Captain says to the man with wings.

Silence.

“If you say so, Cap,” the man with wings says, and lowers his gun, stepping out to the hall, or the rooms beyond.

The Captain is terribly still.

“—Bucky?” he says at last.

_—who the hell is bucky—?_

He looks away. “…I knew you. Didn’t I?”

The Captain moves fluidly, kneeling at his side. “Yes,” he says with rock-solid certainty, “you — you’re my best friend.”

 _you don’t have to go it alone, buck,_ the thin boy says again. He sounds like the Captain.

He tries to choose his words carefully, but his mouth is dry, and they possibly only scrape their way out because pain is relative and the Soldier knows how to ignore it.

“I’m not him,” he says quietly.

The Captain’s hands twitch, as if to touch him, but they don’t. He’s not sure if he’s glad for it.

“Let me help you,” the Captain says. “Please. Let me help you.”

He looks at his hands, tries to avoid the blue of the Captain’s eyes. “I have a mission.”

“Hey.” The Captain shifts, trying to catch his eyes, and he doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to make the Captain think that he means him harm, so he, reluctantly, looks up. “Bucky.” Who knew that gentleness could be a weapon? “Bucky. What’s your mission?”

The Soldier, Barnes — they would be — are? — united in this. He thinks of explaining his activities with the Black Widow, but it’s her mission, not his, has been from the start. She invited him out of kindness, understanding, but it had never not been her mission. 

He only has the one answer.

“You are my mission,” he says at last, the words dragged roughly from him. The Captain does not flinch; the Captain smiles. It’s breathtaking.

“Well, that works out,” he says gently, “’cause you’re my mission, too, Buck.”

It sounds like _i love you,_ the thin boy leaning into his hands. The sunlight glints on his left palm. 

The Captain stands. “Let’s go home,” he says, reaching out a hand to help him up. He feels dizzy.

_— where are we going?_

_to the future, steve —_

“I had him on the ropes,” he says, tasting sleet and grime and gunpowder, Barnes’ ghosts, the Soldier’s scars. 

“I know you did,” the Captain says.

He takes his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> yes, the show he watches is dog cops. i have no idea what dog cops looks like to matt fraction, but i'm guessing it's a show where the cops are dogs and adorableness ensues.


End file.
